Imperial Consultants hosts Robotics Summer School

The five-day summer school, led by Professor Alessandro Astolfi and Dr. Yiannis Demiris from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London, was conducted via the well-established relationship between Imperial Consultants and The Skolkovo Innovation Centre, which includes OpUS.

Following a two-stage selection process, where candidates from higher education institutes in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Tomsk wrote an application letter to the organisers and responded to practical scenarios, twenty-three students were selected to take part in the school.

Teaching focused on the design, control systems and evaluation methods that enable intelligent interaction between robots and humans in a variety of applications such as in healthcare and industry. In addition to lectures, students also attended lab sessions where they built their own interactive robots in teams.

Andrey Egorov, CEO of OpUS added:

“By selecting participants and sending them to the Summer School at Imperial, we aimed to create a team who would help to start a Robotics course at OpUS. Additionally, we hoped to create innovation projects for Skolkovo in collaboration with Russian and international partners”.

Robotics is a popular area of research in Russia, particularly in relation to the defence and space industries.

Tatiana Schofield, Business Development Manager at Imperial Consultants and co-organiser of the event explains:

“Most of the students taking part in the Robotics Summer School were experienced researchers in the field of robotics, control or computing. The summer school programme offered participants a new perspective in this area, introducing them to new state-of-the art technologies. Delegates were able to see how research is conducted at Imperial and apply their new skills at home universities”.

Smirnov Mikhail, who attended the summer school from the St Petersburg State University, commented:

“I think that the Robotics Summer School will really improve my teaching and studying projects in my department.”

Fellow student, Arseniy Zaostrovnykh from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology added:

“Now, I’m aware of many modern technologies so due to the school, I’ve enlarged my own horizons. This will help me in thinking of possibilities in starting innovation projects."

The Summer School will now be used as a prototype for the next phase of this project, which will involve a follow-up school in Russia. This aims to further teaching by looking at additional techniques and technologies.